Improving the Pinterest Experience
Three ways to improve the user experience for casual Pinterest users
Pinterest is an amazing visual discovery tool that has revolutionized the way images and link collections are displayed. The product has transformed the sharing of do it yourself projects, wedding ideas, vacation plans, crafts and more.
Pinterest’s popularity continues to grow. Today, they have more users than Twitter. To continue to successfully grow their market, an enjoyable user experience for people who might be less proficient with the site is key. My interest in this test was to determine what aspects of the website might be frustrating to casual Pinterest users and offer suggestions that would improve their experience.
Objective:
Determine pain points of casual (defined as less than weekly usage) Pinterest users.
Test Parameters:
What — Pinterest web app
Who — Casual Pinterest users who previously found value in the service but now use it less than weekly. Five users agreed to be participate in the test. The testing group consisted of 3 men and 2 women. All testers had used Pinterest previously but did not consider themselves ‘regular’ or ‘daily’ users. All five users were asked open-ended questions and vocalize their interactions with the site along with any frustrations or suggestions for improvements.
Tasks:
- Given a scenario of buying a new house, search for an “L-shaped deck” for your backyard.
- Create a Pin board to Pin decks of interest.
- Pin 5 items of interest.
Analysis:
Each user was assigned a color. Each noted pain point was depicted on a color-coded post-it note.
Pain Points were first organized by testing objective to help see trends across users. They were then grouped into common complaints in order to determine the most repeated pain points.
Findings:
Issue #1: “I had difficulty finding where my boards are located.”
Three out of the five users had difficulty locating where their boards were located from the main Pinterest page. A couple also clicked on the ‘hamburger’ button to the left of the search. Users also clicked on “+” button next to their name to in an attempt to find where their board was located. After clicking on the “+” button, they finally clicked on the profile button to the right. Even after they clicked on their profile, they still weren’t confident whether “My Profile and Pins” on the menu was the correct link to click.
Design Suggestion #1: Make “My Profile and Pins” button prominent on the main page.
“My Profile and Pins” is a the easiest way to see a person’s boards. It should be visible and immediately accessible from the main screen. Displaying it as a prominent button next to other commonly used features makes it easy to find.
Issue #2: “There’s no point of having 3 steps to create a board.”
Every person was frustrated by the difficulty of trying to create a new board. To many users, the “+” made sense to create a board. Even after clicking the “+” to pin an item though, two additional screens were presented before the board was actually created. If a board was created after attempting to pin an existing link, the current process is actually three distinct screens—2 input screens plus a ‘pin suggestion’ at the end. Each screen was slow to load and had additional little value. Most users said that they did not see the value of placing a location on a pin. The third screen of suggested content to pin was never clicked. Each screen takes anywhere from 2-6 seconds to load. That also frustrated the participants. Additionally, two of the people had a difficult time closing the last window that offered suggestions of other content to view.
Design Suggestion #2: Simplify “Add a New Board” process.
A simple solution is to pop-up an “Add a New Board” form in a light box window above the main Pinterest page. Every participant complained about the slowness of creating a new board on Pinterest. The entire three-screen process could be replaced by a single light box window that opens over the main Pinterest screen.
Issue #3: “I wish I could pin multiple pins to a board at the same time.”
Users were asked to pin five links to the new board that they created. Multiple users wished that there was a faster process to pin multiple links quickly.
Design Suggestion #3: Permit rapid pinning.
Permitting the pinning of multiple links is a difficult challenge based on the way Pinterest is built. One option to simplify the pinning process would be to make the pin button as a drop-down scrolling menu once the “PinIt” button is clicked. This would enable multiple pins to be selected in a relatively short period of time and without leaving the main board.
Next Steps:
The next step for my project is to test my design suggestions for their effectiveness and usability. I believe that small changes can result in a greatly improved user experience. I am also interested in learning more about how Pinterest prioritizes their pins to display the most relevant search content. Pinterest recently upgraded their search engine. I’m interested in evaluating how their upgraded algorithm results in more useful search results.
I think Pinterest is a great product but I am not affiliated with Pinterest in any way. This study is put forth unsolicited, in an effort to create value for Pinterest and the people that use it. I’m currently at Tradecraft, learning business development and UX. I completed this study under the guidance of Laura Klein and Kate Rutter @tradecraft in San Francisco. If you have feedback, feel free to contact me.
